Friday, April 30, 2010

There was a god-awful fire on the Red Line last night at Downtown Crossing, so today the MBTA was being real up front with us predicting all sorts of signal driven delays as we crept in town.Well, you knew something was up because even Alewife Station smelled of nasty electrical fire type smoke today.Well, I don't mind it as long as they are prompt with warnings, frankly it is a wonder the Red Line isn't reduced to hitching the trains to teams of oxen at all given the T's financial problems.Anyhow, I opted to make sweet lemonade out of today's lemons, I bolted off the train at Charles Street and strolled thru the Public Garden and on into work.If you have a chance do this, the flower beds are in bloom and the swan boats are smartly lined up like destroyer flotillas at anchor. A very restful verdant scene to be sure, now I am fortified for the day's challenges at the mid level of the life insurance industry.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

It is a shame but even when you remake a sci fi series that wasn't that good to begin with, there are no guarantees.I mean "Battlestar Galactica" opened those floodgates but they had the good fortune to be on a basic cavble station where the bar was set mighty low.Likely ABC will replace "V" with some reality show dross "Who wants to be a pile of organic ashes" or some game show where the prize is being Steve Jobs' simian toady "The Ape-pprentice".Oh well, poor luckless Laura Vandervoort will be back doing auditions and signing her autograph for $20 a shot at the Motor City Comicon.I wish her and cast mates well.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

On one side of me sat a tall youthful aryan specimen, obviously a sophomore at BC reading (what else?) Atlas Shrugged.On the other side of me a slender young woman, impeccably dressed for the office reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".And across from me a slightly scruffy looking elderly gentleman reading Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics".And there I reposed undaunted reading Kenneth Robeson's seminal work of post modernism, "Death in Silver".

Monday, April 19, 2010

It is my sad duty to inform you all that the almighty Tri Town Drive In up in Leominster Ma has been torn down this past winter.The handwriting was on the wall for the past couple of years, rumors of imminent sales clouded the air like mosquitoes for the past three summers, but somehow the blade never quite fell, until now of course.For a while last year, the patient rallied, that hu-uge outdoor screen had been carefully stone-washed and repaired, it never looked higher or more imposing than it did last summer, like it would outlast the next Ice Age.But it was in the end, the Twilight of the Gods.Sadly family issues prevented me from getting out there much last summer, it may well be an ironic matter of record that the very last film I saw there was"The Land of the Lost" starring Will Ferrell.Well what of it? This whole mishaugas started on a trivial note as well, "The Sandlot" (1993) on a double bill with "Hot Shots Part Deux" as I recall.Frankly I saw a lot of irredeemable junk at the Tri Town ("I Love a Mystery, "Warriors of Virtue"), I nearly got my head bashed in by some travelers during a screening of "My Super Ex Girlfriend", And during "A.I." the film kept melting and breaking which was a cue for baffled and outraged families to peel out the exit in a cloud of dust.Still and all that, going to the Tri Town was an adventure, maybe the lat real film adventure of my life, who knows?It was The Destination for any bloated summer epic, the Star Wars prequels, the inevitable tent pole super hero movie or maybe just maybe something fun that slipped between the cracks (expl. "Joe Dirt").I saw S.W.A.T. there, Righteous Kill with DeNiro and Pacino slumming with supreme nonchalance and then ghod help me, Adam Sandler in "Mister Deeds".Somewhere deep in this improbable love affair with an outdoor cinema, I formulated a radical aphorism "A Bad Night at the Drive In is better than a Good Night at the Multiplex"....Lord knows how avidly I sought to test that notion over sixteen years.I think my grandest most impossible film fantasy was to somehow "four wall" the Tri Town and screening Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Two Thousand Maniacs" on a double bill with Arch Hall Jr. in "The Sadist",Like I said impossible, but fun to think about.One night alone, I drove thru a downpour to see "Deep Impact" , miraculously as I pulled up to the Tri Town the clouds parted, the sun shone thru and wen it set, I was rewarded with the near destruction of the world as we know all up on that outdoor screen in technicolor.I had quite literally parted the clouds...Does anyone else have such a vivid memory of such an innocuous disaster movie?That was the sheer power of the Tri Town, it was in the end, a portal out into the Land of Ghosts where the Gods go to war atop pterodactyls and mooks like Seth Rogen can marry Cleopatra sans demure.But the curtain falls, seemingly on everything we love.Still sixteen years is a long time, there are happy marriages that do not last so long.

So at last, I bid the Tri Town Farewell, they always started screening early and ran straight thru to mid October so this will be a very bittersweet drive in season this year I think.

Monday, April 12, 2010

The Mendon Twin lights up this Friday night....This absolves no one in our readership from attending our screening of "The Dragon Lives Again" this Friday night though.Let us not get ahead of ourselves...

Sunday, April 11, 2010

What sort of a wine goes best with a "Brucesploitation" kung fu flick from the 1970's?

The boys in the back room all chorus "Red Wine of course!", but I wanted to ruminate on the topic a bit seeing as how the Somerville Theater now serves beer and wine.

Anyhow, join us Friday Night April 16th at 8pm for a rare screening of "The Dragon Lives Again" starring Bruce Leong. Admission a mere five bucks to discover just what sort of mayhem the late Bruce Lee got up to in the afterlife.